Posted: Mon Apr 22, 2013 10:29 pm Post subject: Earth Day 1970 or I Was There and Back

Behold the coming apocalypse as predicted on and around Earth Day, 1970:

"Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind." — Harvard biologist George Wald
"We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation." — Washington University biologist Barry Commoner
"Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction." — New York Times editorial
"Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years." — Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich
"Most of the people who are going to die in the greatest cataclysm in the history of man have already been born… [By 1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s." — Paul Ehrlich
"It is already too late to avoid mass starvation," — Denis Hayes, Chief organizer for Earth Day
"Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions…. By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine." — North Texas State University professor Peter Gunter
"In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution… by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half." — Life magazine
"At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it's only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable." — Ecologist Kenneth Watt
"Air pollution...is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone." — Paul Ehrlich
"By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate… that there won't be any more crude oil. You'll drive up to the pump and say, ‘Fill 'er up, buddy,' and he'll say, ‘I am very sorry, there isn't any.'" — Ecologist Kenneth Watt
"[One] theory assumes that the earth's cloud cover will continue to thicken as more dust, fumes, and water vapor are belched into the atmosphere by industrial smokestacks and jet planes. Screened from the sun's heat, the planet will cool, the water vapor will fall and freeze, and a new Ice Age will be born." — Newsweek magazine
"The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years. If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age." — Kenneth Watt

The more things change, the more they stay the same._________________Irony is asking government to fix the problems it caused

"Most of the people who are going to die in the greatest cataclysm in the history of man have already been born… [By 1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s." — Paul Ehrlich

"By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate… that there won't be any more crude oil. You'll drive up to the pump and say, ‘Fill 'er up, buddy,' and he'll say, ‘I am very sorry, there isn't any.'" — Ecologist Kenneth Watt_________________Irony is asking government to fix the problems it caused

Happy Unicorn Killer day!_________________I, for one, am glad to be living on a planet with 776x the mass of the super-massive black hole at the center of the milky way just to keep Neptune in its daily orbit around the Earth.
auf alten Schiffen lernt man Segeln.

In ten years all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish. By the year 2000 the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people ... If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.

Priceless!_________________Irony is asking government to fix the problems it caused

Don't tell anybody, but I only pretend to be Malthusian, to try and spread the idea. My strategy is not to limit our population growth, but to limit the population of other countries. That's why we put sterility drugs in the Coca Cola that goes to China, and why we're expanding that program to China. We need to expand it further, however, to the entire Southern Hemisphere, the Middle East, Mexico, and especially Canada._________________Deja Moo: the feeling that you've heard this bull before

Anyone else notice how current alarmists like mcgruff are avoiding this topic?

Right now he's busy being the Wacky Waving Inflatable Arm Flaling Tube Man somewhere else, but he'll probably pop up here, late and just when you don't expect it, like some kind of weird, malfunctioning, John Wayne Gacy looking, communist, tree-hugging jack-in-the-box. "Deniers! No Scyents! Teh collective consensus!"_________________Deja Moo: the feeling that you've heard this bull before

Anyone else notice how current alarmists like mcgruff are avoiding this topic?

Right now he's busy being the Wacky Waving Inflatable Arm Flaling Tube Man somewhere else, but he'll probably pop up here, late and just when you don't expect it, like some kind of weird, malfunctioning, John Wayne Gacy looking, communist, tree-hugging jack-in-the-box. "Deniers! No Scyents! Teh collective consensus!"

Is there any way that an Admin could change his handle from mcgruff to "Wacky Waving Inflatable Arm Flaling Tube Man" please?_________________

Anyone else notice how current alarmists like mcgruff are avoiding this topic?

Right now he's busy being the Wacky Waving Inflatable Arm Flaling Tube Man somewhere else, but he'll probably pop up here, late and just when you don't expect it, like some kind of weird, malfunctioning, John Wayne Gacy looking, communist, tree-hugging jack-in-the-box. "Deniers! No Scyents! Teh collective consensus!"

Is there any way that an Admin could change his handle from mcgruff to "Wacky Waving Inflatable Arm Flaling Tube Man" please?

We have an avatar he can use too: http://i.imgur.com/HIOg5Fx.gif_________________At the heart of the durability of mass schooling is a brilliantly designed power fragmentation system which distributes decision-making so widely among so many different warring interests that large-scale change is impossible to those without a codebook.

In order to be right he'd first have to declare some kind of proposition not merely present some random facts with a nudge and a wink as if they mean something. The audience is encouraged to infer the proposition but the author avoids saying anything he could get pinned down on. This cowardice was the only astute part of the post - the low cunning of the propagandist.